


Gather Night

by nnozomi



Category: Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 08:20:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17138288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nnozomi/pseuds/nnozomi
Summary: When the Weyrleader and Weyrwoman are summoned to attend the first Gather at Ruatha under Lytol, Lessa finds herself afflicted by memory.





	Gather Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mypantsflewoff](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mypantsflewoff/gifts).



The heavy door closed gently, and the room was silent for a moment. Lessa took a deep breath and turned to set down the bowl of warm water the serving woman had brought. F’lar was standing at the window with his back to her, looking out at the darkness; she could see his reflection wavering in the glass. Ramoth and Mnementh were outside, asleep on the Ruatha fireheights after a day of basking in the sun, but the night was deep enough that even Ramoth’s golden hide was invisible. Because the queen dragon and her rider could not yet fly _between_ , they had accepted Lytol’s offer to spend the night at the Hold; it was too late for regrets.

“There are cloths here,” she said, just to have something to say. After a moment, he turned and began to unfasten his dress tunic. Again, for something to do, she came forward and took it from him as he drew it over his head, folding it carefully. The dark gray cloth was fine and well sewn, but obviously old, softening along the seams, with a couple of near-invisible darns that looked to Lessa like Manora’s handiwork.

F’lar, in his singlet and trousers, had dipped a cloth into the basin and was running it over his face, removing the grime of the day. “That was my father’s,” he said unexpectedly, nodding at the tunic. “Manora laid it aside after he died. The material was too good to waste, with tithes as lean as they are.”

Lessa set the folded tunic down carefully on a shelf. “Life at the Weyr hardly imposes heavy wear on dress clothes,” she commented, unsure of how to respond to his rare reference to his father. “Manora found my dress somewhere in the storerooms.”  
“Not Jora’s,” F’lar said absently, drying his face and hands. “She was taller than you are, even before she put on weight. I don’t know how old that is.”

Lessa looked down at the dress, dark purple with a full, heavy skirt and a stiff wrapped bodice, flattering her slim figure and her pale skin. “It’s beautiful,” she said, a little self-conscious.

F’lar’s eyes rested on her at length; she saw him decide not to speak. Instead, he reached up to finger one of the ornate pins in her hair. “You’ll have a hard time sleeping on these.”

Lessa stepped away. “I’ll have a hard time sleeping anyway. But I’ll take them out first.” She turned away and began to fumble open the buttons of her dress, but it fastened down her back and she couldn’t reach. Inevitably she felt F’lar’s steady fingers take over the task, quick and efficient like everything he did. He moved away before she expected it, letting the unbuttoned dress slide off her shoulders and pool around her feet; her reflection in the window, sheer undershift contrasting oddly with the elaborate hairstyle, looked pale and unfamiliar, but she was unwilling to draw the curtains and put one more barrier between herself and her dragon.

F’lar was placing her dress, neatly folded, on the shelf with his tunic. “Did you enjoy the Gather?” he asked conventionally.

“The weaving stall was very fine,” Lessa answered carefully. “I assume Lytol would permit no less, it was his craft after all. And I enjoyed the harper’s songs.”

A true Gather at a major Hold would have a half a dozen or more harpers present, of course, singing and playing in all kinds of combinations, for both performance and dance music. Ruatha’s first Gather in a decade, since the early days of Fax’s regime, was a very modest affair still, attended only by the Holdfolk and the nearby smallholders, along with the Lord Warder’s two honored guests from Benden. (Lord Jaxom had made an appearance earlier with his nurse, touring the stalls and being made much of by indulgent stallkeepers and bowed to by sober smallholders; to Lessa he seemed indistinguishable from the children of the same age in the Lower Caverns at the Weyr, and peer though she would she couldn’t see either Fax or Gemma in his small round face.)

There was just the one Hold harper, along with a couple of apprentices who seemed to be no more than Hold boys who could sing a bit. The harper was a tall stringy man, middle-aged, with very black hair; soft-spoken, his singing voice was a surprisingly rich and husky baritone. Kiyoan, or Akiyon, or something. Lytol had introduced him earlier in the day, but Lessa’s mind had not retained his name clearly. F’lar would scold her for that if he knew, she imagined; he would say that as the Weyrwoman, it was her responsibility to know the people she encountered.

Remember his name or not, though, she had listened to his songs. Some were new from the Harper Hall—there had been one about the birth of the new golden queen, which had been received by Ramoth herself as no more than her due—but others were the Ruathan songs of her childhood, bringing back with breathtaking immediacy the days before Fax. It was not that he had forbidden them during those long ten Turns; only that few at Ruatha in those days had had the heart to sing.

She had seen some of the same aching nostalgia in the Ruathan folk around her. The holdfolk’s clothing was clean and pressed, in many cases even festive, but often patched and old. The faces in the square and around the tables bore the worn-in lines of people who had not had quite enough to eat, or enough time free from worry, for many years. Ruatha had shed the air of hopelessness, of no endeavor ever coming to fruition, that it had worn under Fax’s regime, but ten years of mismanagement and deprivation could not be mended so quickly.

Calculated mismanagement and deprivation, Lessa corrected herself grimly. Calculated by her. The Ruathans, her people, had suffered for ten years because she would not see Fax sit athwart a fat and thriving hold and call it the fruits of his conquerance.

F’lar had been saying something, she realized from his quizzical look; she had not heard him at all. “What?” She began to pull the pins out of her hair.

“What troubles you? Even with Mnementh asleep I can feel it from you.”

“At Ruatha—“ Lessa swallowed as her throat closed. “I feel I don’t know _when_ I am. My bedchamber as a child was down the corridor from this one, I think. Ruatha prospered then; at the Gather in the summer I was nine Turns old, people came from as far away as South Boll and Telgar, there was dancing far into the night, a dozen harpers—I was permitted to stay up and watch a little. Every Craft had its stall…”

“And the next year Fax came.”

“Fax came. And the watchwher saved me.” There were watchwhers in the yard again, but none who knew her or her Blood now. “And for ten Turns I slept on straw and rags in the drudges’ room behind the kitchen where they cooked the meal we ate tonight. Two of the women who served us tonight slept there with me. I could tell you still who scarred Koni’s cheek for her, or how Suta feared mice more even than a beating.” She stopped for breath. “And tonight I sleep here, in the Hold’s best guestchamber, as the Weyrwoman of Benden. I’m too many in this evening.”

F’lar took the handful of hairpins from her and set them down by the bowl of water, watching intensely as her hair, released, settled around her like a fine veil. She wondered if he was seeing her double as well, the drudge with matted hair and a filthy, bruised face. “I’d thought you might be glad to see Ruatha restored.”

“Restored!” Lessa said harshly, startling them both. “This, Ruatha restored! If you knew what it once was…this…this etiolated shadow… Oh, I’m not criticizing Lytol’s wardership,” she added, though he had not spoken. “He’s done marvels, but…it took Fax and me ten Turns between us to destroy Ruatha.”

“You!”

“You know what I did here, bronze rider, you were the one who noticed what I was. Do you think Ruatha would have fallen so far if I hadn’t deliberately done all I could to keep it in misery, torturing a whole Hold for the sake of thwarting Fax?”

F’lar stepped out of his dress trousers, grimaced at the cold—the stone walls held the chill far beyond the cold season, and Lessa could feel it sinking into her bones as if she had never left—and made haste to take refuge under the sleeping furs. “Say Lady Gemma’s boy had died, or been chosen to take Hold at Crom where she was born. Would you have chosen the Hold? Remained here, brought it back to fruition as you’d have it you brought it to ruin?”

“It’s easier to destroy than to build,” Lessa said bitterly. “Say I had. Could I have repaired the damage I did? I was no seasoned Lady Holder when Fax came, only a child. Crushing Ruatha was easy, all too easy. You need only look at Lytol’s face to see how hard it has been to build it once again.”

F’lar was lying flat and she couldn’t see his face from where she stood; his voice was studiedly neutral. “Leave aside whether you _could_ have done it. Is it what you would have chosen?”

“And never find Ramoth?” Lessa’s pain at the idea was deep enough that a dart of reassurance came from her queen dragon, even asleep. She saw F’lar wince too, and wondered if he was thinking of losing Mnementh or of something else. “How could I choose that, knowing what I know now? But—I never knew that I was choosing for so many other people too. When I was ten Turns old, and again when you came and I was twenty. If I had thought…”

Lessa was struck suddenly with a memory of Lady Gemma, the woman’s agony and release and the horror at herself that had gripped her in the instant of Gemma’s dying. For so long before that moment, she had never dared doubt herself or anything she did, though men and women died for it aplenty. She did what she must to survive, to keep Ruatha from falling utterly under Fax’s sway so that she might one day see it free again. She had never thought that for some there was only Gemma’s path to freedom.

F’lar said meditatively, “I admired F’lon—my father, the old Weyrleader—as I’ve done no man living or dead, before or since. In the ten Turns between his death and Jora’s, I saw the Weyr he’d loved stagnate, turn dull, laggard, greedy, shallow, even despairing. Even now there are few enough riders who believe in…in the Red Star.” The instant of fear in his voice flicked through her and through both dragons, sleeping or no. “Before Ramoth was hatched, it was worse.”  
“But not through your actions.”

“I? No. I did nothing, for good or ill. Jora…” He paused. Lessa began to braid her hair, finding the steady repetitive work soothing. “The only worthwhile thing Jora did in the last ten Turns of her life was to live long enough to let us find _you_. But when F’lon was alive…he was no Fax, no indiscriminate womanizer. If she had been that repellent to him, I doubt Simanith would ever have flown Nemorth. Jora was pretty once, and good company, and she cared for her dragon. In those days there was little enough else asked of the Weyrwoman…”

“My friend the watchwher would have made a poor enough dragon, but he played his own role well,” Lessa commented.

F’lar was startled into a short bark of laughter. “Yes, you might put it that way indeed. Jora was shattered when F’lon died. No dragonrider will suicide while his dragon lives, but Jora lost the will to do everything but, and the Weyr suffered along with her.”

Lessa found herself imagining Benden Weyr without F’lar.

She was silent for long enough that F’lar spoke again. “You are no Jora, Lessa. You lost everything once, and bore far worse than Jora did—and without a dragon, yet—to win it back again. You’d manage.”

“…What makes you think I would care?” But it was a feeble retort and she—and F’lar, she was afraid—could hear a sleepy Mnementh laughing at her.

“Jora and R’gul dragged the Weyr down, but now it rises again,” F’lar went on, although she fancied she could hear the slight (smug!) smile in his voice. “Ruatha suffered worse, but now it grows and heals in Lytol’s hands—and he is free to guide Ruatha because you brought Fax to defeat.”

“ _I_ brought Fax to defeat?” she said ironically, granting his premise for the sake of argument. “Who fought that duel, bronze rider?”

“We did, then.” She thought he was still smiling. “I did shed blood over it, I’ll grant you that.” A sigh, sounding tired. “Come to bed, Lessa. Ruatha lives. So do we.”

Ruatha was free. Fax was long dead. Gemma’s son lived. She, Lessa, was Weyrwoman of Benden, and might never spend longer than the occasional Gather night again at Ruatha in her life.

Lessa bound off the end of her braid and covered the glow basket. In the dark, her steps were still unerring. F’lar’s warmth beside her was soothing to her chilled body, and, loath though she was to admit it, to her bruised soul.

She had half expected him to reach for her, gentle but arrogant in his insistence, as so often at the Weyr; but the hand that came to rest on her thigh went no further and offered comfort, and she did not move away. Sleep was slow in coming still; she lay listening to his steady breathing, seeing past, present and future move around her, Lessa of Pern, in the quiet dark.

 

**Author's Note:**

> A quick treat for an old favorite fandom; I hope you'll enjoy it.


End file.
